The Difference
by mysticxf
Summary: Jack thinks about his mom during an outing with Kate


Lost belongs to JJ Abrams and all the people out there in Hawaii. I'm borrowing for fun. Jack thinks about his mom during an outing with Kate. Enjoy

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Lost – The Difference  
By MysticMarch 30th 2005

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His mom was screaming at him again. Jack was twelve, he was going through puberty. He'd been caught looking in a girl's window. On a dare. The woman with the dark red hair and the flushed cheeks still had brandy on her lips as she ripped him from a neighbors grip and threw him into the house. She stood back a moment and gave him that look, the one that said, "What have you done this time, Jack?" Then she followed it with a scowl that added, "Your father is going to be so disappointed." 

Jack was used to these looks. He got them everyday. So when she screamed some more, he made himself cry just enough to get him sent to his room without diner, but he made the mistake of letting out a huff of breath in annoyance. Her cold fingers slapped the side of his face and his eyes jerked wide open as he stumbled backwards. She'd never hit him before. Jack's parents preferred emotional and psychological damage.

His hand rose to his cheek which burned as he looked back up at her. His mother seemed as shocked as he was. Her hand was still cupped slightly and she balled it into a fist, turning away from him and going to the kitchen. Jack knew she was going to pour herself another drink. He felt real tears spring into his eyes, ones that hurt more than any words his father could have told him. He'd disgraced her.

Standing in the foyer, he stared at the front door, wishing he could make himself run away. There were nights he spent hours standing in front of the door with his suitcase when he was younger. He just kept telling himself to leave, but he couldn't go.

It wasn't the responsible thing to do.

Jack closed his eyes and took a long breath, then went into the living room and sat on the couch waiting for his mother. He knew they weren't done, he knew if he went to his room she'd follow him up there and berate him some more, so he'd learned long ago to just have a seat and wait patiently.

"Missy Smith's mother's in my Bridge club. She's going to be furious when she finds out about this. I'm never going to hear the end of it. My little Jack peeking in her window like some hoodlum..." the sentence faded away in Jack's mind as he watched the crows line up on a large tree branch just outside the window.

It was going to be spring soon. Not that it made much difference. It'd just be a hotter hot and he'd sweat more in the school yard. There would be flowers though, Jack liked the flowers. Mark called him a fag once 'cause he scooped up a bunch for his teacher. He didn't even have the courage to beat the snot out of him, he just shoved him out of the way and went to class.

"Jack, are you even listening to me?"

"No," he said with a shrug.

* * *

Sitting on a high branch in a tree he wasn't even sure how he climbed, Jack looked down at the Polar bear below him. It tried to shake the tree, slamming its massive paws into the bark. It looked a lot like his mother that day. Teeth gnashing, slobber flying, eyes bloodshot. But she hadn't hit him again. It was the first and last time he'd been disrespectful to her. Jack didn't even know why he was thinking about it, he had no reason to.

It occurred to him that if they stayed on the island, he never had to think of either of his parents again. Somehow, that made him feel better, even if he was a tree's shake away from being a Polar bear's dinner. The clouds were beginning to accumulate in the sky and Jack knew it would be raining soon. He wondered if the bear would run. Glancing around, he shifted to a sturdier branch and gripped the tree.

"How dare you?" His mother hissed, standing in front of him.

Jack stood. "So what if Melissa's mom gets mad. I apologized to her and to her father. I'll call and apologize to her mother too if it makes you feel better."

"What has gotten into you?" The woman barked.

Putting one hand on his waist, he raised the other quickly, letting it drop back down. "You think I'm happy about this? Mark dared me to look in her window. I was chicken, didn't want to do it. Dad's always telling me to stop backing down from things, so I climbed up a tree and looked in her window. Saw her in her bra and panties and got busted. By her DAD! I'm sorry if I'm a social embarrassment to you mother."

* * *

Jack threw a branch down at the bear and watched it howl in frustration. He looked at the branches around him and saw there were large green fruit. Ones Walt called Stink Bombs because when they were green, they were rotten. Picking off a large one, he hoisted it down onto the bears head, watching it recoil slightly, wiping at its forehead where yellow slop was now dripping. It growled and Jack grabbed a second one, throwing it onto the bears back. It jumped, taking several steps away.

"Took you long enough! Were you even listening to me!" Kate shouted from an adjacent tree. The branches of her tree though were bare of fruit. She clung to the thick trunk, blood running freely from a cut on her left temple. Her eyes looked wild, scared and he smiled over at her.

"No," he told her with a shrug.

Raising an eyebrow, Kate pointed at the tree, "You've got four on your left there. Toss me one."

"What?" Jack asked, huffing a short laugh.

She nodded and held out her hand. Jack threw it careful, amazed that she caught it like a baseball and smashed it against the tree. She took the goop and smeared it over her arms and he made a face. "What are you doing?"

"Covering our scent."

"From what?"

She gestured over her shoulder. "There's four more behind these trees here. If we make a jump for it, no matter how quickly we run, they're going to be able to track our scent and catch up."

"You're right," he shouted. "Disgusting, but right," he added in a whisper, breaking a fruit over his knee and pinching his eyes shut in disgust. He heard her laugh at him as he gave a hoot and spat air. "We jumping?" he asked, starting to bring his hand to his nose and realizing it was smeared in yellow slime.

Kate watched the Polar bear below them and shook her head, "We gotta get that one to run."

Raising his head, Jack tried to ignore the smell coming from his chest as he picked two more fruit and threw them as hard as he could at the bear. It howled and took several steps away. He looked to his right when Kate told him to and found three more and pelted the white coat of the bear until it scrambled into the trees to meet up with the others.

* * *

Jack's mother stood in the center of the living room with her mouth wide open. She'd ripped into him with words Jack never thought he'd hear come out of his mother. Curse words. He thought they were too civilized for that, or at least that's what he'd been told when he let loose an f-bomb at the dinner table when he saw they were having roasted duck again. He looked away from her, feeling horrible.

"Sorry," he mumbled inaudibly.

The woman nodded her head and left the room and Jack knew that was it. He was free to go. She didn't mention any of it to his father and Jack was glad. He somehow figured it would get him lesson number fifty two in sex and his father was the worst teacher. At least Mark's father bought him an issue of Playboy. Jack couldn't imagine his father in the kind of bookstore that sold Playboy.

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"JUMP JACK!" Kate shouted from below him. She shook the tree and the branches near his head rustled, shaking him back into the world and he climbed down quickly, jumping and rushing after her. She'd left him behind, but just enough that she could still hear him behind her. He wondered if she'd ever let him protect himself again.

Her head turned slightly, making sure he was still there as she crossed a stream and slowed. Jack fell into a comfortable jog and looked over his own shoulder, confident the bears hadn't followed. He turned when he heard Kate laughing. She was wiping at her arms and using a clean part of her shirt to rub her face.

"What's so funny?" Jack asked.

She pointed at him and let her arm drop as she turned and started walking calmly towards the beach. "You."

He smiled as his eyebrows fell in confusion. "What?"

"A bear chases us up a tree and you're drift off to lala land." She smiled. "What were you thinking about?"

"Truth?" He asked.

Kate nodded and flicked yellow muck off her fingers.

"I was thinking about my mother."

"Your mother?" Kate raised an eyebrow and slowed to let him catch up with her. Jack watched the way she looked at him, a mix of confusion and amusement that made him laugh aloud as he nodded his head.

"The bear..." he trailed and she snorted a laugh. "Reminded me of my mom."

"Wow, guess incarceration's better than some things when we get off this island." Kate tried to will herself to smile, but Jack watched her fail.

"What was your mom like when you were a kid?" Jack asked suddenly. He'd heard her mention her mother before, it seemed like a happy memory.

Kate found her grin. "She was... special."

"'Baked cookies and ran the PTA' special?" He imagined his own mother organizing school functions. She'd joined the PTA once, when he was six, but dropped it after a year because they wouldn't allow her full control. It frightened Jack then, the idea of her getting what she wanted.

Shaking her head, Kate wrinkled her nose in disgust. "She was just a good mom."

"Which would lead one to believe you were a good child."

Kate shook her head again, this time a devious smile spreading on her lips as her eyes widened. "I was a handful."

Jack shrugged. "I guess ever kid is."

She turned slightly, "You? A handful? You mean you weren't born in a suit and tie?"

"What's that mean?" Jack asked, trying not to sound offended.

"You just come across as the type to follow the rules." She gave a shrug and took a deep breath.

He imagined she could smell the ocean. Jack looked beyond the trees ahead and just saw more trees. He glanced at her quickly and saw a drip of red splatter on her green shirt. He stopped. "Kate," he said simply.

She turned and gave him a peculiar look, like she was trying to pinpoint the emotion behind his word. Taking several steps towards him, she shook her head slightly and started to ask, "What?" when he raised his hand and touched the cut on her temple. She jerked away from his touch with a hiss of pain. "Oh," she said softly.

Jack closed his eyes a moment, his memory flashing back to just ten minutes before. They'd been inches from a kiss. Their first. She was standing so close he could feel her body heat and just as he was going to close the space, the bushes behind her opened and a polar bear came down on them. They were knocked apart. Jack heard her give a shout of pain and the Polar bear turned to her, so he threw a rock at it.

His father would have told him to save himself; his mother would have told him to listen to his father.

"It's fine, it's good." Kate managed, but she let Jack hold her head and look at her temple. She obviously hadn't realized the whole left side of her face was crusted in blood. Head wounds bleed a lot, Jack learned early on in life. Lots of blood didn't necessarily indicate a major injury, he'd learned later.

Jack started back towards the stream.

"Jack?" Kate shouted, slow to follow. "The bears are back there."

"They're not going to come after us remember? We smell like rotten eggs right now."

She started to nod, but she shook her head.

"I need to clean the wound, make sure it's..."

"What are you gonna do, carry me back to camp? Jack, come on, let's just keep walking, we can clean it at the next stream."

He smiled. "Scared?" Jack teased.

"Yes!" She admitted with a shout.

Stopping, he turned and watched as she planted herself in a spot ten feet from him and waited. He sighed and went to her, taking his thumb and rubbing off the dark red blood that had crusted and looked at the cut. It wasn't too deep and had stopped bleeding. He watched her eyes shutter and he smiled. Jack let his hand drop onto her shoulder and then slide down her arm and through her fingers before he started back for the beach. He listened as she remained, then Kate pivoted and followed him silently.

Jack always thought all the women in his life were going to be like his mother. Most of them had been in some way or another. They ordered him around and treated him like the child he hadn't been in many years. Jack thought he'd never find a woman who looked at him as an equal and even looked up to him. He was so glad he was wrong.

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Finis 


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